Work Matters

Tag: d.school

  • Launch Pad: A Stanford Class Where Students Started 11 Companies

    IMG_5857
    There are many entrepreneurship classes taught throughout the world, in some students talk about how what explains the success and failure of start-ups, and very often, such classes include a business plan competition, where groups pitch ideas for new companies.  These classes often do help people start companies, and at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, our faculty have taught classes that have helped future entrepreneurs in many ways.  But this last term, two Stanford d.school faculty members (and experienced entrepreneurs and bosses) Michael Dearing and Perry Klebahn ran a class called Launch Pad where students were just expected to talk about starting a company, the focus on was on launching the company during the 10 week class.  To be part of the class, student teams — and many more applied than were accepted — had to pitch their idea to Michael and Perry, and if they believed the idea was viable and the team was motivated enough, then they were accepted in the class to try to launch their company. 

    The class has been over for a few week and was one of the most successful things ever done at the d.school.  (To be clear, a lot of what do fails, and I have been involved in some less successful classes with Michael and Perry, but they like most people at the d.school have the attitude that if you are failing a fair amount, you aren't trying hard enough or taking enough risks).  Here is what the d.school website says about the class:

    From the first day, students pushed to both launch their own products,
    while using their experience and expertise to help classmates do the
    same. Throughout the quarter, teams constantly cycled through the design
    process, often making major changes to their initial idea in order to
    hone in on what their potential customers wanted, and what would be
    viable in the market    .
     
    The result? Eleven products or service were launched.
    Collectively, the teams had over $100,000 in revenue by the last day of
    class. Eight teams are now incorporated in four countries. Add in a bit
    of press from the New York Times and NBC, as well as a shout-out from
    Steve Jobs during his talk at the World Wide Developers conference, and
    you’ve got Launchpad: lifting design thinking teams into entrepreneurial
    orbit.

    Not bad for a 10 week class, Huh? As just two example, check -out this story about Pulse, which Tech Crunch described as a "must have" app for the iPad, it is a news reader that you can but at itunes for 3.99, and is selling quite well. The students who founded it are Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta.  They already have a company called Alphonso Labs, and two employees, and are the one's who got the shout out from Jobs — note that they just graduated from Stanford two weeks ago and are off to quite a start!  And check out this story on the d.school blog from as few weeks back, they were up to 50,000 downloads and were the #1 paid app at the iPad store.

    A much different, but also very promising, is a service called Worker Express that was founded by Pablo Fuentes and Joe Mellin, which helps unemployed construction workers find jobs.  Check out this story on on the local NBC affiliate and this one at Fast Company.  I think the picture above is especially interesting because it shows how the prototyping process worked during Launch Pad, essentially, in the d.school space, the founders of the 11 companies had a "beta" or practice trade-show where they set-up booths and pitched their ideas to a a host of diverse people on campus and to the classes coaches and teachers too, so they could develop and refine their messages.  The picture captures Pablo and Joe pitching their service.

    I am very proud of all the students in the class, of Michael and Perry, as well as d.school Fellow Corey Ford, who were part of the teaching team that made this all happen.  Great work.


  • David Kelley Nails It Again: “The d.school teaches creative confidence.”

    Last Friday, we had an opening gala for the new building (actually it is a massively reconstructed old building) that houses the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford — or as everyone calls it, the d.school.  In fact, if you can take a video tour of the new building.  We were swimming in university officials of all kinds, although since it was the d.school, there were more students and former students than anything else.   Hasso gave a lovely and quite funny speech and the good feelings ran high all afternoon.

    Many interesting things were said that afternoon. Yet, as is pretty much always the case, our founder and inspiration David Kelley (who also was the co-founder, first CEO and driving force behind IDEO) made the most striking observations.  David commented that, yes, we teach many elements the design thinking process to our students (in fact, many are cataloged in this amazing and free document called "The Bootcamp Bootleg," which I think is better than any book on how to practice design thinking than you can buy). He argued however, that the most important contribution that the d.school makes to Stanford students and the people we teach from outside the university too (from elementary school kids, to Girl Scouts, to doctors, to executives) is creative confidence.  David went on to explain that the main tests used to decide who gets into Stanford and who does not, as well as the bulk of the training in the technical aspects of engineering, math, and the sciences, are constructed to that there is a right answer to the question and it is the student's job to find that answer and report it back to the teacher.

    Certainly, such definitive technical knowledge is crucial.  I want engineers who can calculate the right answers so that bridges don't fall down and airplanes don't crash.  As valuable as it is, however, such training — with its focus on individual achievement under conditions under which the right answers are already known — means that a lot of the people who come to the d.school for classes lack both the skills and the confidence to work on messy problems where the faculty don't know the answer (this is very disconcerting to some of our students) and the only hope is to keep pushing forward, observing the world and the people in it, identifying unmet needs, brainstorming solutions, and trying to develop prototypes that work — and failing forward through the disconcerting process.

    The thing I liked most about about David's emphasis on "creative confidence" is that I think he nailed the single most important thing that the d.school does when we are successful.  Yes, the assignments we give people and methods we teach them help on the journey, but as David suggested, the result of spending decades in educational system (this is true of the U.S. and other countries) where those anointed as the best students rapidly uncover the one and only tried and proven true answer (look at the blend of SAT scores and grades used by most colleges for admission decisions, at least 90% of that entails uncovering known right answers) is that some of the "smartest" students freak-out the most when faced with messy and unstructured problems.

    The journeys that we take students of all ages on just about always entail helping people confront and overcome their discomfort with trying to solve unstructured problems (that the faculty have not already solved — and in most cases — don't know how to solve).  When the d.school process works right, that confidence means that, even when people aren't sure what methods to use, they have the energy and will to keep pushing forward, to be undaunted when ideas don't work, to keep trying new ideas, and — as happens — even when the deadline for the project comes and they do not have a decent solution, to believe that if they just had another few days, they would have come up with a great solution.   

    So, although many words were said about what the d.school does at our opening ceremony and many more will be said in the future.  David has, as always, come-up with the best compact summary of what we strive to do: Teach Creative Confidence. 

    P.S. A related argument was made by psychologist Robert Sternberg, who argued that creativity can't happen unless people decide to pursue it. See this post.  But I think David's point is even more crucial, because if people decide to pursue, but lack confidence they can succeed, the are likely to suffer and unlikely to succeed.

  • Fantastic Free Conference on Reconciling Business Growth and Sustainability on May 4h at Stanford


    My friend and colleague Debra Dunn
    from the Stanford d.school just wrote me about a conference that she is hosting
    as part of her class on Sustainable Abundance. 
    She has put together such a fantastic line-up that I think I am going to
    sneak out of the house to attend.   Here
    are the details and it is open to the public and free. BUT as they need to know
    roughly how many people are attending, if you are going to do so, please     RSVP to miniconference@rocketmail.com.  Here is the scoop:

    2010
    SUSTAINABLE ABUNDANCE MINI CONFERENCE

    Theme: Reconciling Business Growth and Sustainability

    When:   Tuesday, May 4, 3:15-5:00

    Where:  Stanford d.school, Peterson Building (Building 550), Studio 1

    Panelists:

    Andrew Ruben, Wal-Mart.  He was appointed
    by Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott as the first vice president of the company's
    sustainability initiative. Now he heads Wal-Mart's private brand sourcing
    strategy and drives   increased ecological transparency of Wal-Mart's
    suppliers.

    Adam Lowry, co-founder of Method Home Products.
    Lowery now  heads the Greenskeeping team
    at Method, which is composed of environmental specialists, scientists, and toxicologists

    Albert Straus, founder and President of Straus
    Family Creamery    , the first Organic Dairy west of the Mississippi

    The conference will be moderated by Debra Dunn and Bob Adams.   Bob pioneered the design for sustainability practice at IDEO, where
    he is now a Fellow.

    The range
    of experience and skill here is just stunning. 
    The thing that really impresses me about this line-up is that every
    person is deeply committed to supporting sustainably in ways that mesh with and
    support financial performance.  And all
    five — the panelists and moderators — have done more than talk about doing so,
    they each spent years making it happen, 
    I also have heard most of them speak, and this is a remarkably lively,
    fun, and honest group.  Again,     please
    RSVP to miniconference@rocketmail.com.   

    P.S. As
    an added bonus, if you go to the conference, you get to see the new d.school
    building, which is very cool.

  • Treating Organizational Practices as Prototypes: A d.school course for Stanford Graduate Students

    Debra Dunn, Kris Woyzbun, and I are teaching our course on Organizational Practices as Prototypes (MS&E 287)for the third year in a row at the Stanford d.school.  This is a small course — just 12 students — focused on applying the design process to organizational behavior issues.  In past years, our students have worked on improving the experience of JetBlue customers who have delayed flights, improving the employee onboarding at IDEO, developed prototypes for improving employee performance feedback at Mozilla and Cooliris, and — as you can see here in BusinessWeek — helping to revamp the all hands meeting at Timbuk2.

    This year, we have the first two projects planned and are in the process of lining-up the third and final one.  The first project, led by d.school stalwart and design star Perry Klebahn, will be short one focused on how to recruit and design jobs for the new generation of knowledge workers.   The aim of this project, in addition to getting the class to jump right into the challenge of designing organizational practices the first day, will be to teach students the design thinking process and involve students in an intense "get to know you" exercise. 

    The second project will be with JetBlue and we will be working with Sam Kilne for the third time. Sam is fantastic at setting-up things so that students have great access to JetBlue employees, is very responsive to students questions, and gives fantastic feedback.  The topic this year is developing means so that JetBlue employees can provide timely and useful feedback and suggestions to management — a project we are calling "reinventing the suggestion box."  

    As you can tell, this is a hands on class, where the emphasis in learning by doing, and in that vein, developing prototypes that organizations actually implement. Alas, it is only open to Stanford graduate students (although I promise occasional updates here). The details are here. Class meets 3:30 to 5:00 MW at the Stanford d.school. If you are interested in applying, please send a resume and an pitch about why you want to join the class to both Debra and me (our emails are found on the link).

    P.S. The official name of the class this year is "Prototyping Change in Entrepreneurial Firms." 

  • d.school Alum Laura Jones Selected by BusinessWeek as one of “21 People Who Will Change Business”

    Prototyping
    I just got a note that Laura Jones, who now works for Visa on innovation initiatives, was selected by BusinessWeek as one of 21 People Who Will Change Business.   We were lucky enough to have Laura in our class on Creating Infectious Action class about two years ago, and I agree that Laura has the zest for life, smarts, and determination — plus the leadership skills — to change business or anything else.  That is Laura (on the left, you can see her energy) during our first day of class, developing prototypes to improve dental hygiene.  I still remember the first time met Laura, and was rather amazed to hear her say that the reason she applied to the Stanford Business School was she wanted to take d.school classes, and the great work she has done at the d.school and at the business school has apparently been noticed.  Congratulations to Laura and take this coverage as a good sign for design thinking and for the value of the perspective that the d.school offers. I look forward to hearing about the work that Laura is doing at Visa.